


The Escape from Hogwarts

by ladysherlockian



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysherlockian/pseuds/ladysherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some sort of Prologue to "The Sack of Hogwarts."  It provides the background for the Allied Forces of Narnia and LotR's intervention at Hogwarts. </p><p>Basically, four children named in honour of the Pevensie children are stuck in Hogwarts and do not like it very much ;) But don't worry readers, help is coming!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Escape from Hogwarts

**Author's Note:**

> I still haven't read "Harry Potter" and I'm not going to.

Once upon a time, there were four siblings. Their parents were great fans of fantasy and they met on one of the CS Lewis conventions. Then, they fell in love and married. Not surprisingly, they named their offspring after the four Pevensie children from The Chronicles of Narnia. 

The first calamity struck right on the first day on their stay there: each of them was sorted into a different house. However, this was only the beginning of the North siblings’ abysmal misery.

The next thing was that Susan wanted to telephone her parents to tell them that they had a nice trip and that they reached their destination safely. Nothing simpler to do, thought Susan, as she took her shiny smartphone out of her bag. How did she smuggle the device to her dormitory I cannot tell. But let’s make the long story short. Susan retrieved the smartphone from her bag, and, smiling proudly at her achievement, proceeded to turn it on. The little phone turned on and even played a little tune on start-up. Smiling happily, the girl was about to tap the phone number of her Mum to dial it, when she suddenly noticed that she is out of range. There was not even a meagre one dot showing the availability of the network. Susan was slightly surprised, such things happened sometimes when you were far away from the tower, yet nothing to be afraid of.  
“What are you doing?”, Susan heard a voice. For a moment she did not realise that it was one of her new friends.  
“What do you think I am doing?’, said Susan, annoyed,” I’m trying to get a signal.” She could not fathom how other children could be so stupid and know nothing about the mobile phones and how they worked. “I want to telephone Mum and say we’re OK.”  
The girl looked at her with pity. “I’m afraid we are out of reach here”  
“I’ll try outside, then,” said Susan and left the room.  
“You are not supposed to leave the dormitory without permission, “ shouted the girl, but Susan was then, well... out of reach and did not hear her. She went straight ahead, smartphone in her hand, her eyes on the display, looking for the returning network. A young girl with a mobile phone in her hand, it all looked quite out of place here, and Susan could have easily fallen into trouble. But somehow she was lucky and managed to find her way to the exit and went to the gardens. There, she started to look for the most solitary and upland place, where it was easier to get in touch with the mobile phone network. Still nothing. Maybe it was not high enough. Maybe they were too far from the transmission tower. Maybe. Or maybe there was something wrong with her phone. But already another idea was forming in Susan’s head, too horrifying to be put into words. She tried other functions of her phone, to find out if there was something wrong with the device itself. E-books worked perfectly. More and more things pointed in that terrible direction. No, I won’t start panicking yet, Susan said to herself soothingly. It didn’t help much, though. It would be better if she could speak to her sister Lucy. She hasn’t seen any of her siblings since the sorting. Oh, how she wished they were with her now! As she was thinking these thoughts, Susan noticed the school building for the first time - she was too busy with the phone to look at it thoroughly before. Now she did not fail to note a high tower in one of the buildings. If only she could get to the top of the tower, maybe she could connect to the network. As long as there was this tower, there was hope! Without any more thinking, Susan rushed towards the tower. What followed, should never have happened. Susan should have never actually reached the top of the tower. I think Susan was allowed to do it only so that she would fully realise the seriousness of her - and her siblings, too - situation. For when she reached the top of the said tower, raised her hand with the phone as high as she could strain, the device was still out of range. There was no denying it: she was cut off from the rest of the world. The smartphone has been magically prevented from receiving the signal. They were trapped here! With no chance of communicating the outer world! Susan trembled when she first allowed this thought to reach her consciousness. She felt herself faint. Her heart almost burst from her breast. She leaned on the battlements to prevent her from falling, so weak she felt.  
“O, Elbereth, o Gilthoniel,” she heard herself whisper. Her parents taught her all songs from Tolkien’s books, including the ones in Elvish languages. Susan had no idea, why she said it, here and now. Yet, after she had uttered it, she felt her strength returning. Now she knew exactly what she had to do - warn her siblings! She ran down the stairs like a wind, humming Sam’s Song in the Orctower to herself.  
Again, Susan was in luck. She did not know all the silly things about the houses not being allowed to interact with each other, and meeting her sister in a place where they could be seen could get them both in great trouble. Maybe the Valar were directing her steps on this fateful day, when, after leaving the staircase, Susan North headed to the bathroom. There already was her sister Lucy.  
“Lu, we have to talk,” whispered Susan, “something really bad had happened.”  
“What?” asked Lucy.  
Indeed, the Valar guarded the North girls this day, for Susan had the bright idea of closing herself and her sister in one of the toilets for greater secrecy. A moment later, another girl went into the bathroom, and they would be doomed if she had seen them.  
Inside the toilet booth, the girls crouched on the lid of the toilet bowl, so that their feet wouldn’t be seen. There Susan showed Lucy her phone and explained everything that had happened to her since.  
“Funny thing happened with my laptop, too,” admitted Lucy. “I wanted to surf the net and send an e-mail to Mum and Dad. It booted OK, I read some of my e-books, but it couldn’t find any network in range. And then I saw it was running out of juice, so I wanted to recharge it. Imagine what happened? There was no electric socket to be found anywhere!”  
Susan looked down in sadness. Not only were they out of range, there was also no electricity in this school. Things were getting worse and worse. To add injury to insult, the girls hadn’t spoken to their brothers since the sorting. They felt so lonesome and vulnerable here.  
“I’m afraid we are cut off from the outside world,” said Susan. There was no point in hiding it from Lucy.  
“It seems that the school and its surroundings are spelled against the Internet and telephone network. Something like the girdle of Melian, only this one is evil,” said Lucy with a shudder.  
“Perhaps we are not allowed to have electronic devices,” said Susan, “maybe they are forbidden here.”  
“Nobody told us about it,” said Lucy, “And anyway, what is it, some kind of penal colony? What do they think we are going to do? No Internet, no music, no e-books! That’s not fair! When do they think we’re living? in Middle Ages? Why do they take the Internet from us?” tears swam down Lucy’s face.  
Susan hugged her sister and dried her tears. “Of course we are not going to stay here. I don’t know yet how, but we will escape, I can promise you.”  
Lucy looked soothed a bit. She even smiled.  
“When I come up with something...” began Susan, but stopped in the middle of the sentence. Now that their mobile phones didn’t work, how were they to communicate? Problems heaped on problems. “Maybe let’s meet here everyday - same time, same place?”  
“Maybe we could talk during the meals?” suggested Lucy, unveiling her naivety and innocence. Both girl hadn’t known yet, that - since they now belonged to two different houses - they were supposed to never even look at each other, save with hatred. But, of course, such abhorrent idea could find no place in their good and loving hearts. For the time being, the two guiltless girls waited and listened to the sounds from outside of the toilet booth, making sure that no one was in the bathroom when they went out of the booth. They were lucky again, for the bathroom was empty, and the dangerous little girl who entered just after them, gone long ago. However, they made their first, fatal mistake. Instead of parting in the bathroom, and leaving it separately, Susan and Lucy North went to the corridor, holding their hands. Taking into account that they were from two different houses, they had just committed an unforgivable offence. Soon, all eyes, fellow pupils’ and the teachers’ alike, were on them. The inescapable doom closed on them.

It is not difficult to guess that the North brothers had similar adventures. Peter, just like Susan, wanted to telephone Mum and Dad. Obviously, he was unsuccessful, since, like Lucy had so cleverly pointed out, the entire area had been magically girdled against the outside interference. However, unlike Susan, he didn’t start panicking, thinking it was a temporary problem. Nevertheless, he wanted to talk to Ed. So he slipped away from the dormitory, and went to the dining room, unnoticed. Just like the girls, he had a lot of luck and nobody stopped him before he reached his destination. It all went so smoothly at the beginning only so that his eventual downfall would be more painful. 

Peter spotted Edmund from afar, his brother was sitting at the table with a group of boys his age. And this is when the catastrophe struck. Instead of joining the fellow students from the house that he belonged to, Peter North headed straight to the bench where Edmund was sitting with these other boys. Ed even made the matters worse, standing up and going to welcome his brother.  
“Hi, Ed! I’ve been looking for you,” said Peter North. No sooner did Edmund smile back at his brother, than the rest of the students rose from their seats. In a split second, the brothers were surrounded by other children from their respective houses, brandishing their wands at them. The situation got a bit out of hand, there was not denying them. The students from the boys’ houses looked at them with hostility, glancing at them as if they wanted to kill them with their eyesight. Maybe Ed’s new pals could actually do this, after all. Peter could sense sweat falling down his back. There was no escape. 

Ed felt only his arms being twisted behind his back and himself being moved away from Pete by force. The same must have happened to his brother, since Edmund saw Peter being taken away by one of the teachers as well, though in a more delicate way. Edmund, however, felt bony, icy-cold fingers of the teacher pressing into his flesh, sending shivers down his spine. How he wished he could free himself from this clutch! However, he was led to the wall instead, the teacher never letting go of his hand for a moment. He now turned so that Edmund had to face him directly. The boy’s hand remained in his fist.  
“See there, Edmund North, “ he hissed at the boy, “You have broken one of the most important rules here by speaking to your brother. You must realise that such behaviour is totally out of the question.”  
“But Peter’s my brother,” protested Ed.  
“Peter belongs to Gryffindor, and you are a Slytherin. You two are from two enemy houses. Edmund, you are not to talk to your brother anymore. You are supposed to hate him.”  
“But...” began Edmund, this time more shyly.  
The teacher looked deeper into Ed’s eyes, and the boy trembled. “You may cheat yourself but not me,” he heard the professor’s icy voice,” because deep down, you already hate your brother, don’t you, Edmund?Aren’t you jealous of the bright Peter, always the best one, always the one to be praised by your parents and siblings alike? Now you have a chance to best your brother. Isn’t that what you have always dreamed of?” The clutch on Ed’s wrist seemed to get tighter and tighter. Out of the corner of his eye, Edmund noticed that all other students, including Peter, were watching the skirmish in silence.  
“You mistake me, sir,” he managed to say,” Me and my siblings are not the original children who were kings and queens of Narnia. We were only named after the Pevensies.”  
A murmur went through the whole room after these words. Edmund was not sure, but it seemed to him that the clutch on his hand was a little bit less tight.  
Well, the clutch might have been loose, but this didn’t mean that things were getting better. On the contrary. With utmost fear, when Edmund looked at the teacher’s face again, he saw there unconcealed, unadulterated anger. He raised his wand towards the boy.  
He’s going to harm me, thought Edmund. There was nothing he could do to save himself, nowhere to run to, and the clutch on his hand was still quite strong.  
But the grace of the Valar was with the North siblings today. Not knowing where the words come from to him, Edmund shouted desperately “By Elbereth and Luthien the fair, let go of me!”  
And a wondrous thing happened. The teacher turned pale, released Ed’s sorry hand and his own wand at the same moment. The wand fell to the floor and broke.  
“Luthien...” repeated the echo.  
What had just happened? Was it indeed the Valar’s grace, or rather Morgoth’s curse? For Edmund was free, he was standing before the fellow students, who looked flabbergasted at him. But at the same time, he ridiculed the most perilous teacher in front of all houses, and made a sworn enemy of him, all on the first day here! Things looked very bleak for little Edmund North. Just like for the rest of his siblings. What a pickle they got themselves into!


	2. The Purloined Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Edmund's copy of "The Lord of the Rings" gets stolen by a teacher.

The first month at Hogwarts had been a miserable time for the siblings - maybe even the worst time of their short lives. They received -200 points each last week. If the matters continued to be as they were, the Norths would have to retake the first year to make up for the lost points. They were the worst students in their respective houses, the teachers called them “the plague of Hogwarts” and other students shunned them. No wonder that the children had only themselves to fall back to, which, unfortunately, only made their situation worse, since they haven’t stopped talking to themselves and thus receiving more and more punishments. The girls’ clandestine meetings in the toilet were, however, not detected. 

Things were not that bad for Edmund as it seemed at the beginning. True, he had made a deadly enemy of one of the professors. But, surprisingly, it didn’t have any influence on his life. Contrary to what Ed had expected, the teacher left him in peace instead of bullying him. Edward was never asked anything in front of the class. Never was his homework checked. The only time the teacher actually pronounced his name was when he called the roll. Edmund was glad of such immunity. It seemed that it was a result of what happened in the dining room. Perhaps the teacher wanted to avoid repeating that situation. Once, it occurred to Edmund, that he wanted to say something to him. For a moment, the boy saw anger and hatred in the professor’s eyes, but in the end it turned out that he addressed another student.

But this stalemate didn’t mean that Edmund’s life was happy. He still hadn’t made any friends and hardly saw his siblings. He talked to Peter once or twice in the toilet, but he hadn’t spoken a word to his sisters since the sorting. Sometimes he glanced at them from afar when they happened to be passing the corridor at the same time. From their faces he could guess that they weren’t happy, either. This only added to his misery.

Recently, Edmund felt more and more depressed. In the morning, he didn’t know how to survive the new day. What about his siblings? How were they managing it? How could he know how they felt, let alone help them, when they couldn’t even talk? Edmund pressed his fingers into a fist. His helplessness hurt him so much.

He often wondered if they would ever be happy again, like they were in their early childhood. Thanks to their loving parents, the North children had a wonderful time. He missed his parents terribly. Come to think of it, at Hogwarts they were worse off than prisoners, who at least could see their loved ones sometimes. The North siblings had to wait until Christmas to go back home. Christmas! Like all children, Ed loved the holiday, but particularly this year he couldn’t wait for it. Christmas meant freedom! How easy it seemed, leave for the Christmas break never to come back here again. But, more often than not, Edmund felt that he couldn’t suffer his stay here do long. Christmas break was as far as eternity. And Edmund feared that he was going to break down any day. He really couldn’t survive it much longer.

The truth was, apart from his parents and siblings, Ed missed his school, too. The school he attended before the disaster struck. He had his friends there, he liked the teachers and they were good, friendly teachers to boot. The classes were fun sometimes; he particularly enjoyed the English lessons and beautiful stories Miss Smith was telling them. Shall he ever hear these tales again?

Thinking of stories, Ed suddenly remember something. He had a book in his luggage, a book he hadn’t unpacked yet. This was his parents’ favorite book, and Ed loved it as much as they did. F He first heard it read aloud by his Mum, and it was one of the most beautiful memories he had ever had. It was a real blessing to find the trusty volume here, in this bleak place. 

Slowly, quietly, Edmund got out of his bed and went to fetch his luggage from underneath. Most of it was still unpacked, and this included the volume of Tolkien’s prose, too. Ed found it covered in a piece of cloth. Deliberately, he unwrapped the book. This volume was the most precious thing he had ever owned.

Luckily, he had found also a small flashlight. How it got into his luggage Ed didn’t remember, but he was happy to have it here now. It was middle of the night and definitely too dark to read. True, Ed could have used a spell, but honestly, he had enough of spells during the day, so he was glad to behave like a normal child at least now. Thanks to the flashlight, he felt more like himself, back in happy days at home. It was wonderful to experience it again.

Edmund knew the book almost by heart. His parents read it aloud to him so many times, and he read it himself twice. It was the first thing he read after he learnt how to do it. Now, he frantically leafed the volume to get to his favourite passages. Quickly, he found one of them - that about Eowyn defeating the Nazgul, and scanned it, devouring every word. Then he read the poem that the Eagles sing after the Ring is destroyed. He felt hope returning to him. Then, he browsed to the last part of the book, the goodbyes of Frodo and Sam, and Rosie welcoming her husband. This made him almost bold. He intended to read on to “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” when the disaster happened.

“What do you have here, North?” the ice-cold voice of the professor shattered the silence. His words resounded menacingly in the silence. To Ed, it seemed that his heart stopped beating for a moment. Ed was at a loss. The volume was too big to be quickly hidden, much too big. 

Anyway, it was too late. The teacher mumbled something under his breath and, waving the wand, incapacitated Edmund’s flashlight and put up a magical light at the same time.

“Students are not allowed to have any other books except the set textbooks listed in the acceptance letter,” he said, “Now, give me the book, North.”

The teacher murmured some more spells, pointing at Edmund and than at the volume. Again, the boy saw the horrible grimace of anger on the professor’s face. He moved the wand towards the book again, but nothing happened.

“He wants the book to fly to him,” realised Ed, “but it isn’t working somehow.” He clutched the beloved volume to his heart, which was beating too fast. 

The teacher wasn’t going to tolerate this situation anymore. He hid the wand and went straight at Edmund, tearing the book away from Ed’s hands. Edmund wanted to scream, to call Luthien like he did the first time. He formed his lips to produce correct sounds, but what he said was inaudible.

The book was hanging in the air above Ed, its covers held in the awful fingers of the teacher. He held the opened book by the margins as if he had disgust towards it. Scared as he still was, Edmund was beginning to feel slightly surprised. The teacher’s terrible grimace changed. Bewildered, Ed noticed that the countenance of the professor was contorted as if in pain. He didn’t have much time to think about it, though, since in a split second the teacher waved his wand at him again and stormed out of the room, the book in his hands.. When he was gone, Edmund discovered he could speak again.

But his book was gone. No, if the teacher wanted to revenge himself on Edmund for ridiculing him, he couldn’t have chosen anything better to be his vengeance.


	3. The Sky is the Limit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Narnia is only a fairy-tale, or is it? The key to Lucy North's problems falls - quite literally - from the sky.

Now, Edmund’s loss of “The Lord of the Rings” volume was a calamity. Luckily, his sister Lucy managed to keep her copy of “The Chronicles of Narnia” secret. Sometimes, she browsed through them at night, to give herself strength to face yet another day at Hogwarts. She read particularly the passages about her namesake Lucy and learned to be like her, to imitate her in real life. It was so difficult to do here, but Lucy North hoped, believed and knew that Good will eventually triumph. And if she would be like Lucy Pevensie, she could have a small part to play in the Good’s victory.

Lucky was lucky, after all. She belonged to the Hufflepuff and wasn’t guarded as painstakingly as Edmund was, and, what was perhaps the best of it all, she ran no risk of meeting a certain teacher in the dead of the night. Thanks to these circumstances, Lucy could continue her nightly reading sessions, undisturbed by other pupils. She quickly learnt some more practical spells that allowed her to read at night by her flashlight without waking up her fellow students or alarming the teachers. In general, Lucy was averse to spells, but these ones enabled her to regain her old self, if only for a part of the night, so she used them. Or this was how she explained it to herself, at least. The problem was, Lucy North was becoming quite a bright student, soon she could make up for her bad marks she received during the first week of study. 

It was during one of the nightly readings of “The Chronicles” that this event, which I am about to describe, happened. Lucy had just read the chapter in which her namesake finds a book of spells.

Lucy sighed. Was she ever to get out of here? Was she ever to be happy again, living with her parents and siblings? Tears came into her eyes, but she stopped them, not wanting to soil the book. Oh, if only the story in this book were true! If only she could call the good lion Aslan to help her and her siblings! She sighed again. “The Chronicles” was her favourite book, but still, it was only fiction, a fairy-tale. She was here now and she had to free herself and her siblings only thanks to her own powers, she had to find another way out. Was it any? Maybe if she could find an exit of sorts here, at night? She had never walked out of her dormitory at night. Maybe it was her mistake. Maybe if she did, she would have found the escape route long ago, and she and her siblings could be safe at home? She chastised herself for never thinking of such an opportunity before. During the night, it occurred to her now, the building may be less guarded and thus she would stand a chance of success. 

“What if I meet this nasty teacher of Edmund’s,” she whispered to herself and shuddered. It was this possibility that kept her from searching during the night, she now realised. Well, if she wants to escape at all, she must be more enterprising. Lucy thought back to her namesake in “The Chronicles.” Lucy P. was so scared, too, when she had to find the book of spells, yet she saw it through nevertheless. “I must be like her, “ said Lucy North to herself. She tucked the books in her luggage, and spelled it so that no one except herself could find them. It was kind of awful of her to use spells willingly, without being forced to, but somehow she couldn’t bear the thought of losing them. 

On tip-toes, Lucy left the dormitory. No one awoke to see her go. It was quiet and nothing seemed to move or live in the whole castle. It was as if everything in it, except Lucy, was dead. Gloom and hopelessness always hung over Hogwarts, and at night it was perhaps all the more pervasive. Lucy felt so lonely, so lost in the huge building, so small and vulnerable. For a moment, despair took over her heart. “To fight is pointless,” she thought to herself, “The defeat is certain.” She no longer had “The Chronicles” nearby to infuse hope in her.

Lucy left her bed without shoes, and now she was walking barefoot. The coldness of the floor brought her back to herself. She had to try, not for herself, but for her siblings.

Her siblings! Susan, Peter, and Edmund! Where were they? Supposing she found the escape route, how was she to get them there if she even didn’t know where they were sleeping! She brushed these thoughts aside. Now, she had to concentrate on the search. 

It as dangerously close to dawn and Lucy still looked for an escape route. Fortunately, she didn’t come across the infamous teacher, but she hadn’t found any way out either. All doors were spelled , and she didn’t know the correct words. Of course, she tried “Say friend and enter,” but to no avail. 

Dejected, she went back to the dormitory. She didn’t go to sleep, though. It was impossible to sleep after this unhappy, futile search. She just sat by the window and stared outside. The night was dark and gloomy, like everything about Hogwarts.

Suddenly, she noticed a star. A bright dot on the ocean of impenetrable blackness, so small that she could easily overlook it. Lucy smiled to herself, remembering the scene from “The Lord of the Rings” when Sam sees a star from the Orc Tower. “Darkness shall not endure, “ she whispered to herself. The star vanished.

At the same moment, she felt someone touching her arm. He must have entered the room when she was looking at the star. Could it be the perilous teacher? But no, the touch was pleasant, soothing, warm.   
“Lucy North, “she heard the man say. She turned to face him, and couldn’t believe her eyes. it was the Narnian wizard Ramandu!  
“It was you whom I saw falling from the sky?” she whispered, afraid that she dreamt the entire thing and speaking out would spoil it all.  
“Yes, Lucy, daughter of Eve,” he said calmly, “It was me. I am here to boost your spirits . You have proved yourself to be extremely brave, persevering and worthy of bearing our Queen Lucy’s name, “ he smiled. Oh, it was a wonderful smile! The whole world seemed to shine when you looked at it.   
“Have you come to take us out of here? Me and my siblings?” she asked hopefully. She couldn't get out, of course, but it was no problem for Ramandu.   
“No, Lucy,” he answered, “ It is not that simple. Your courage brought you here, to meet me, and it will free you from this dismal place. All you have to do is to find the spells unlocking the closed doors. Then you and your siblings will be free.”  
“But why... why don’t you help me? I don’t think I can succeed on my own...”  
“Trust me, Lucy North. Only give me your trust and not only will you and your siblings be free, but also the world of magic will be vanquished forever. Fail us not, Lucy North, “ Ramandu explained, and planted a kiss on the girl’s forehead. Then he disappeared. 

Was it only a dream? But her forehead was still pleasantly warm, and outside, on the dark sky, a solitary yellow star moved.


End file.
